We are pleased to announce that Open Query, Queensland-based
provider of MySQL, MariaDB and related services which just
celebrated its 11-th anniversary, has been acquired by Catalyst
IT Australia.

Founded in New Zealand in 1997, Catalyst is an experienced and
respected Open Source integrator. Catalyst is looking
forward to the opportunity to work with the current Open Query
clients as well as with new prospects. Catalyst offers a broad
suite of Enterprise services, including support and custom
development for Drupal, SilverStripe CMS, Moodle, Samba and other
software, as well as fully managed hosting on AWS and other
platforms.

“Catalyst’s core values are very much aligned with those of
Open Query, which is why we are particularly pleased with this
outcome”, notes Arjen Lentz, Founder and Exec.Director of Open
Query.

As I reported via Twitter late last week, we encountered an issue
that got some of our mail delivery delayed by about a day and a
half. I’ll explain more about what happened as I believe in
openness on these matters, and also the experience has
educational content for others.

Our mail server doesn’t have direct external interaction, it’s
shielded by two relays that handle both the inbound MX and the
outbound queue. This setup works remarkably well in terms of
exposure to spam and other malicious activity. As previously
discussed, it appears that it’s more difficult to make mail
server infra more resilient without expending lots more
time/effort and infrastructure expenditure. Just because of the
way the common tools for mail delivery and imap are built, having
two or more of each in a semi-active setup gets quite complex.
Complexity is in itself a risk so it has to be considered in
relation to the costs and risks of the …

We have to limit the number of people to 40 this time so make
sure you RSVP timely!

We are gathering at 5:30pm and technical goodies are starting at
6pm so use this time to catch up with other members. We should
finish by 8:30pm including a beaks and some post follow up. The
presentation schedule is a bit floating this time.

As usual, we should have some pizza and beverages facilitating
seamless peer networking. ;-)

In addition to the main topic, we plan to have some overview of
Oracle / Sun deal and share what everyone thinks about it +
report from the …

Let me start by a recap of what the process looked from my point
of view:

My close colleague gets his visa rejected.
He is a seasoned Australia visitor, so I assumed (and still
assume) he knew what he was doing.

We connect the dots between the rejection and an IM
discussion from August 2008 (see comment #29 on my blog), related
to competition and Sun employees being let into
Australia. Due to the nature of how visa rejections work, I
cannot prove this is the case (even with the additional …

Open Source is global in nature. You can develop
a database in, say, Finland or Sweden, and become known in, say,
Ukraine or the United States.

This would imply that Open Source knows no
borders.

In practice, borders hamper Open Source work a
lot. I have been familiar with the hassle involving
MySQLers in Russia and the Ukraine trying to get Schengen
(European Union) and US visas for meetings. And I have myself
gone through a lot of hassle travelling to Russia and once even
(out of my own stupidity and carelessness, though) been denied
entry to India when I already was on Indira Gandhi airport in New
Delhi.

But now, I’ve experienced what I had expected the least:

Several Sun Microsystems Inc employees,
especially related to the Database Group, have been
denied short stay business visas to Australia, over the
last few months, …

Open Query is a leading provider of high-quality MySQL,
PostgreSQL and related training in Australia and New Zealand.
They offer consulting services too, and are also known for their
MySQL Graph Storage Engine. Feel free to browse through Open Query web-site
for more info.

Open Query was founded by Arjen
Lentz, who was employee number 25 at MySQL AB. If you follow
the MySQL community then I’m sure you already read Arjen’s
blog.

Hej hej from Stockholm where I arrived about two weeks
ago for a fun-filled two four six weeks of meetings and
face-to-face contact with the MySQL Cluster developers. And the
chance to check things out when it’s not 2°C and raining, all the
time, as it was when I was here in November and December of 2005.
(This week, it’s 12°C and kind of misty.)

The last five or six weeks have been pretty hectic, and this
evening (it’s just after 10 PM local time as I write this)
represents the first time in that span that I’ve actually had
time that’s not been planned out for me in one way or another. At
the end of April, I moved out of my place in Brisbane and stuffed
all my gear into storage in Coffs
Harbour, New South Wales, where I rented a post office box
that now constitutes my sole legal address for the duration.

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